Field Of The Invention
The invention relates to a method for winding elastomeric ribbon about a conventional spool and the wound spool resulting therefrom.
Elastomeric ribbon is coming into increasing use in the clothing industry due to its thinness, resilience and relative ease of manufacture. Polyurethane based ribbon is an example of such a soft elastomer and is generally made as a blown film or as sheet material by extruding the elastomer as a sheet and slitting it to the desired width. This ribbon is sold either in single width rolls or loosely piled in large boxes. It would be extremely advantageous if elastomeric polyurethane ribbon could be wound about large spools and unwound for use in commercial processes.
There are disadvantages associated with using polyurethane ribbon in this manner, however. By the nature of the material, polyurethane ribbon easily tangles and twists. This prevents successful winding of large amounts of the ribbon and accounts for the polyurethane ribbon being provided in slit rolls of only a single ribbon width or in bulky boxes of loosely piled ribbon. As might be expected, there are several problems inherent in utilizing these boxes or rolls in commercial processes. The most obvious is that the supply in either a box or roll is soon depleted during high speed manufacture of a product utilizing this elastomeric material, such as processes for manufacturing disposable diapers which utilize the elastomer as a binding for leg openings. Since no practical way has been found to obtain a flying splice of polyurethane ribbon ends to each other, the process must be stopped and a new roll brought into play each time a box or roll is exhausted. This is cumbersome and results in a substantial amount of "down time" for an otherwise highly automated, high speed process. If during feeding of the ribbon, a box of material is used, twists and tangles which snarl the machinery are common and also result in substantial amounts of down time even though the amount of polyurethane material contained in these boxes may be greater than the amount which can be wound in single width rolls.